four times Tris asked Four to undress, and one time she didn't
by evizyt
Summary: I have never seen a naked man before. Until the shared dormitories of Dauntless, I never even had the opportunity. Now, though, my eyes burn as I barely even remember to blink, so focused am I on the slow path of his pants down his legs. "Breathe Tris," he laughs, and I am abruptly dragged back into myself. A Tris/Tobias romance.


_A/N: Yes, it's happened, I've written a Divergent fic. What next, you may ask? First Twilight...Now Divergent... Actually, I think I have a few movie fics coming out soon. So stay tuned! Also, as always, I'm pseudo working on my harry potter stuff. Anyways, this is slightly trippy because it should vaguely fit within the books but not 100%, it's sort of my take, so enjoy, but don't try and make it 100% canon. What I wanted it to be was in-character._

000

**four times Tris asked Four to undress, and one time she didn't**

000

**one**

He puts his lips next to my ear and says "You look good, Tris."

And then Al is throwing me over his shoulder and hauling me away from Four, and we laugh and eat and I think of Abnegation. A part of me enjoys this, that much is true. I have never eaten hamburgers, or clutched sharp stabbing pains in my side from laughing, from being kicked, from the sting of a tattoo needle on my collarbone.

I feel wild.

After dinner we return, more slowly now that we are weighed down with food, to the dormitory. Christina sits on Will's bed and he pulls out a sketchpad from somewhere, drawing shapes and animals with a steady hand. Christina, who I've always thought couldn't lie, somehow manages to tease him, telling him that he is a terrible artist and earning shoves and tickles in return. I watch their play, feeling strangely lonely. Al looks at me longingly from his cot, but I have no desire to be thrown over his shoulder again.

I haven't taken off my eyeliner yet, and my hair still hangs around my head in its unrestrained curls, their heady wildness echoing my emotions. I run my fingers up and down the tattoos on my collarbone, thinking of Four's words. Of course he didn't know I had a tattoo. How could he? Yet something irks me about his words, or his tone. Perhaps it is the surprise with which he said them, but perhaps not. There was something more in his voice. Something…possessive.

I stand, feeling the way my pants cling all around my legs and am abruptly self-conscious, aware that everyone who looks at me can see their full outline, can look up and see my collarbones and the slope of bare skin from my neck to shoulder. Before I can think, I rush out of the room. Christina looks up and I nod at her. I'm okay. She smiles at me slightly before returning to Will.

My feet take me to the chasm, and I no longer fight the magnetic pull toward Four. Instead, I allow myself to hope that he will indeed still be there, that I could run into him, that maybe he will reiterate his offer to me, to hang out with him and his friends. I doubt this last one, but since coming to Dauntless, I have forgotten what it is like to daydream. It feels nice to indulge in the frivolous fantasies of a girl. In Abnegation, even your thoughts were supposed to be of others. Time spent dreaming of your future was selfish, a waste in which you could be solving a problem, or thinking of a loved one. In Dauntless daydreaming is discouraged, because it will get you killed.

But I am neither Dauntless nor Abnegation, I tell myself, picturing Four walking toward me, and so I dream.

When I reach the chasm, I spot him easily. Like before, I can tell from the way his gait has shifted that the bottle in his hand is liquor. When did I learn his stance and posture so intimately? Because I find that I've memorized every detail. I don't need the cloud over his eyes or the way that words seem to drip from his mouth in contrast to his usual precise articulation; these trademark signals of drunkenness seem superfluous in light of the way that one shoulder droops slightly, throwing off his usual impeccable balance.

This time I approach him, slowly, and I watch the way his eyes drink me in, something I've never noticed before. Well, he did tell me that I looked good, and I suppose I do. Different, at the very least. Maybe to him, different is good.

I frown at this thought. Different is dangerous. Different will get me killed. Different is Divergent, and Divergent is forbidden.

But then he is in front of me and all thoughts are forgotten when he smiles. It is sloppy, for Four, inspired more by alcohol than emotion, but it lights up his eyes all the same. My heart leaps at it, and I wish it didn't, but nevertheless do nothing to combat it, this strange interest in him that I have.

"Hey, Tris," he says. His hand reaches out to hover above my tattoo.

"Hey Four," I reply. "Still admiring my tattoo?"

He takes it as an invitation, and his fingers slowly descend on my bare skin. I barely quash my urge to sharply intake breath as he runs them delicately up, down, and then up again. His fingers, so callused and strong from years of weapons training, are strangely delicate against my own more fragile exterior.

At some point he has stepped closer, and I can feel the heat of his body, along with the sharp, sour smell of his breath. I wonder how much of the bottle he has drunk. Alcohol is a part of life at Dauntless, something I never experienced in Abnegation. Four catches my glance to the bottle in his hand, and leans back to place it between us.

"Want some?" he asks, and I hesitate. I doubt my instructors are supposed to be offering me alcohol—but then again, this is Dauntless. Four shakes his head a little. "Once a Stiff, always a Stiff," he says.

Anger flares in me. "I didn't say no," I tell him, and snatch it from his hand. His arm flicks out as I draw it towards me, as if to grab my wrist, but he stops the impulse before following it to completion, and so I bring the bottle to my lips unhindered. I take two quick swigs of the harsh liquid, swallowing it before I can really taste it. It is a strange consistency, almost oily, and it slides down my throat, leaving a burning sensation in its wake.

"Oh," I cough after a minute, a hand the bottle back. Four watches me with a strange expression, his head cocked.

"You know, Tris," he says, stepping closer once more. "You're really not what I expected."

He is wearing a black leather jacket with metal studs on the shoulders, and they glint in the low light of the cavern. The scent of alcohol rolls off Four again, but somehow it's not so bad.

"What did you expect?"

He smirks. "Well, a Stiff," he says, elbowing me in the side.

"Ow," I manage, wincing as he hits a bruise, and throw a shove. My hands meet metal points and fail to budge him at all. I pull them away, smarting, and look mournfully at the imprint of spikes on my palms. "That's a terrible jacket," I tell him.

Four laughs. "I'm in Dauntless," he replies. "We have to be fierce."

"I would never wear a jacket like that," I decide.

"You really don't like it?"

"I really don't," I agree, still holding my hands. The spikes were sharper than they looked; I think one may have punctured the skin. "No one will ever touch you if you wear something like that."

He looks at me. "That's the idea," he says dryly. "But if it bothers you, I'll take it off."

"Okay," I say, and he unzips it, sliding the sleeves slowly down. I have seen Four in the training rooms. I know what his arms look like. But as he sheds the jacket to stand in a tight sleeveless T-shirt, I cannot remove my eyes. His arm muscles ripple under the skin and he lays the jacket on the railing before us, the metal ornamentation clinking against the bars.

I sigh with envy, thinking of his arms, and look at my own. The cut of my own shirt hides much of the upper bicep, but a small stretch before the elbow is visible. I reach my hand out in front of me, trying to tense it and catch a glimpse of a line of muscle, but no such view is forthcoming.

Four, seeing the motion, laughs, and turns my wrist so that I can look down and see the slight ridge from my tricep. I don't think any of my old Abnegation shirts would fit my shoulders anymore; they are strong and unfamiliar.

He doesn't move from his position, slightly pressed against my side, and I find that I truly no longer mind the smell on his breath, because there is another smell there, a more familiar one. His hands remain, one on my wrist, one on my shoulder. His hands on me are unfamiliar, but somehow not unwelcome.

Four seems to be thinking the same thing. "The point of that jacket was not to be touched by anyone," his voice sounds in my ear, low and deep, "but since you demanded I take it off, I guess I'll make an exception for you."

I turn my head. "I demanded no such thing!" My words are heated but the heat rapidly dissolves as I realize the proximity of our faces. His eyes are so close to mine that I'm sure he can see what I'm thinking; our mouths so close that I imagine he can smell the liquor on my breath too.

"It's not so bad," he tells me. "Maybe I'll wear the jacket a little less."

I turn my head, relaxing back into my previous posture, and Four somehow settles around me, dropping one of his arms so that the back of my shoulder leans against his, and his other arm holds mine, still outstretched. I look again at my tricep, watching it spasm and relax.

0000

**two**

I demand to see the entire tattoo, and before I know it, he is fingering the hem of his shirt, looking at me speculatively. My desire to see his back subsumes my senses and I don't understand what it is that his eyes imply.

"Are you asking me to undress?" Tobias asks, humor swirling somewhere in that indecipherable gaze.

"Only partially," I reply, the heated blush of Abnegation swirling in my cheeks. "Only partially," I whisper to myself.

He shivers when my fingers brush his skin, slowly tracing the whorls of black ink that almost completely cover his back, and I hold back a shiver at the tattoos, at what they could mean.

"I continually struggle with kindness," is his final explanation about them, and we share a small smile. Tobias pushes. Everything about him pushes: pushes me, pushes others. He is anything but static, and kindness (at least in my opinion) is too often synonymous with stasis. Amity is immobility.

Our relationship is a constant struggle—a clash of black on white, of selflessness and bravery and kindness and loneliness, a warring of emotions that maybe isn't so different than the warring of factions.

I cup my hand around his face rather than responding, slowly drawing his jaw down for a new type of kiss.

Usually our lips are hurried, our kisses somewhat less than leisurely. We have places to be, to go, people to avoid and wars to fight and solve. But somehow this time when my lips touch his, the outer world begins to fray at the edges and slowly dissolve, as he moves my hands from around his jaw to the front of his chest.

His fingers cover my smaller ones, much as his lips engulf my own, and when he finally removes his hands to place them at the small of my back, I can no longer keep them still. I run them down his stomach, awed at the ridges of muscle.

Before joining Dauntless, I had never seen a shirtless man. When we were much younger, Caleb and I bathed together to save water and time, but the pale chest of a ten-year-old boy is much different than this tanned, war-hardened machine beneath my fingers. His abdominals contract with each breath, hardening and then loosening beneath my fingers, and I realize that if I move my hands slightly, his breathing hitches too.

My feeling of power—so unfamiliar, when it's Tobias involved, is rapidly removed when his own hands slide around to the front of my shirt, teasing the edges. My breath stops so fast I think I might be choking, and he notices my abrupt, abnormal stillness. We stand like that for a moment, silent, as I hesitate on the border of desire and fear.

I joined Dauntless because I wanted to be courageous; because I knew that if I stayed in Abnegation, I would eventually be bored. But my courage fails me that day, beneath Tobias's fingertips, and he exhales, a long sigh that pushes his stomach out.

"I'm okay with being the only shirtless one today," he tells me, the humor still present in his eyes.

And he claims that he struggles with kindness. I laugh inside, and his fingers slide slowly away from my bare skin to twine in my hair.

0000

**three**

The third time I ask Tobias to undress it is accidental. We sit on his bed together in the afternoon, occasionally kissing, and I wonder aloud about the Dauntless lifestyle. If it has been kind to his body, after over two years.

"I do have some scars," he tells me, his fingers tracing a small white line on my upper arm courtesy of Peter. I don't believe that Tobias, invincible Tobias, with his four fears, can possible have any scars worthy of the name.

"Seriously," I tell him.

Tobias looks at me. "I do," he insists. "Eric and I had a fight off books, and he was wearing his boots." I think about how I know Eric was once Erudite; how cruelty like his can only be born of a vast intelligence, capable of devising and desiring the torture and pain of others. I remember seeing his boots: heavy, black, steel-toed monsters, and wonder if he put nails in the bottom for better traction. If the scar Tobias is about to show me is any indication, I would be willing to bet that he does.

"Show me," I say, pushing his shoulders slightly. "_Show_ _me_," I urge. "I want to see!"

He smirks at me, and suddenly we're both remembering the other time I ordered him to undress and his fingers go to his belt-buckle.

I blanch and then he is chuckling, enjoying the sight of my stricken face. He reaches forward to brush a hair off my face, finger tracing past the shell of my ear, and then both of us are motionless, remembering another time that I gazed at him with the same expression, eyes wide and horrified and somehow—not terrified, not really, not at all—as he threw knives so close to my head that in a blink, I could have been brained. He breathes out and I can taste his breath.

I lean forward, turning my face up for his kiss, lonely and aching and abruptly bereft, without his lips on mine, but he draws back, fingers returning to his belt. My surprise is slowly replaced with curiosity as he unbuttons the top of his leather-like pants and begins to slide them down.

I have never seen a naked man before. Until the shared dormitories of Dauntless, I never even had the opportunity. In the dormitory, I was careful to avert my eyes when others changed, hoping to give them some of the privacy that I desperately missed. Now, though, my eyes burn as I barely even remember to blink, so focused am I on the slow path of his pants down his legs.

"Breathe, Tris," he laughs, and I am abruptly dragged back into myself. They are just legs, I remind myself. I have them too. But I do not have legs like these: strong, brown, muscular. His skin gleams in the low light, a toffee color darker than my own, and the muscles in his thigh bulge and then compress as he extends his leg to pull the black material off his ankle.

My eyes travel up his legs, taking in the underwear—black, like everything else—that is thankfully loose. He smiles again, and I feel a hot blush rise in my cheeks.

"Be careful what you wish for," Tobias says playfully, and I frown at him. "This is the third time you've demanded I undress," he reminds me.

"You've always been very eager to acquiesce," I rejoin.

He slowly turns over so that he is lying on his stomach, hamstrings standing out on the back of his legs. On the back of his upper right thigh is a huge silvery scar of a gash framed on the bottom by what look like old puncture wounds. Definitely the steel toe of a boot, with some sort of nails or gripping material on the bottom. I breath out one slow breath through my mouth, briefly allowing myself to imagine the sort of pain that an injury like that can induce.

I see the fight in my mind. Tobias is turned from the momentum of a block when Eric shifts his weight too rapidly on to his back leg, the front rising for a sharp kick that Tobias can't block completely. He diverts it from his knee (Eric's aim, I am sure), and thankfully so, because a kick like that would blow out his kneecap, but Eric's boot still manages a glancing blow to his thigh, cutting through the material of his pants to gouge the flesh. I can picture how the back of his leg must have turned soupy, dark blood soaking through and dripping down the back of his knee.

"Who won?" I ask softly.

He smiles at me, rolling onto his back so that he can pull me on top of him. "Me," he says.

In my dreams that night I see Tobias—no, in this situation he is Four—walking away from Eric, who lies contorted on the ground, and the footprints from Four's right leg are surrounded by blood. Eric's nose and mouth both drip blood, but the patch at the back of Four's leg is incomparable, gushing with a strange force, and I wake up breathing hard, the image of gushing blood in front of me.

Tobias finds me in the dark, brushing his lips against my forehead, and my hands snake around us to tentatively touch the back of his thigh. I feel him tense against me, an almost unfamiliar sensation. It is always me, me who is tensing, slowing things, pushing him away. I almost laugh, to feel his visceral response to my touch. Instead, I wait quietly, and he shakes with strange tension for two long minutes, before he abruptly relaxes into my arms. I trace the muscles of his back, still unknown, unmemorized, and finally lightly touch his scar. He twitches, and then his hands slowly wrap themselves around me, pulling my body flush against his.

I have never done this—sleep so close to a boy; press myself against him so completely, and a bubble of panic rises in my chest. But a slight shift causes my fingers to run over his scar again, and somehow the unnaturally smooth flesh is comforting. Tobias is human too.

We fall asleep like that, in each other's arms, the shape of the other finally familiar.

0000

**four**

"Tobias!" I shriek, and when he doesn't respond his old nickname bubbles in my chest. "Four!" I cry. Four. Only four fears, and with me—only six, and somehow none of them have ever prepared me for this moment. Why isn't his injury one of my greatest fears? Maybe it never occurred to me that he was fallible enough to be injured, that anyone would ever be able to hit him with a gun. Part of me still thinks that this is some kind of mistake. Not Tobias, I think. Surely not Tobias.

Blood seeps like it once did in my dream, but this time it is not from his leg.

Maybe if I had been in Erudite, I would know how to fix this. I would see the intricate patterning of the veins and arteries, I would know if the blood pumping out of his body, the bright-red-upon-contact-with-air blood, the gushing life that seemed to be pouring with an alarming amount of strength—maybe I would know where it fit in. Whether it was being shunted back to the heart, or pumped away from it. I would know which limbs were in danger, what blood type he was, how to set up a transfusion. I would figure out a way to heal him immediately, to fix this, to fix everything.

But I am not in Erudite. And that was never my choice.

There is so much blood, I think. I have never seen this much blood. Where is the wound?

"Where?!" I shout, and Tobias twitches, a motion I have seen from him so seldom that it sends a deep wave of nausea through my stomach, the type of fear that is so sickening it is almost incapacitating.

Some blood leaks out of his nose and panic grips my stomach like iron that I crack my hand across his face.

"TOBIAS!" I shriek, and the slack look disappears, as I watch myself come into focus in his eyes. "Help me," I whisper, trying to move his arms to get off his jacket, trying to be gentle, failing, always failing.

"Tris," he mutters, and suddenly there is hope, lifting away the edges of fear, but the panic is still there, still present. Maybe if I were in Erudite, I think, I could fix him immediately. But I am not in Erudite, not now and not ever, and so right now I know only one thing: stop the bleeding. The thought takes hold in my mind, settling over my frantic panic like a blanket.

I have to get some of the bleeding staunched, get him out of this war zone, set him away where I can protect him.

"Help me get your jacket off," I tell him, and it becomes a chant, as I pull out my knife and start hacking at one of the sleeves. "Help me get your jacket off," I sing, "we're going to make a tourniquet." I repeat this over and over as I start the second sleeve, a rhythmic chant to myself, and suddenly the jacket is off and I can see, it's in his upper shoulder, maybe just flesh, and he won't die, I don't think.

"Same old Tris, always trying to get my clothes off," Tobias says, as I ready some of his jacket to be a bandage, and then I begin to press on the wound and he faints.

I faint too, eventually. I may not be weak, but I have never pretended to be strong.

0000

**finally**

We both know why Caleb has volunteered. Tobias may not admit it, even to me, even though I am closer to him than he may even be to himself, but we know.

So maybe he also knows, when I slip against him in the night, why I am so steady, why my hands no longer shake when I bring them up behind his back to trace the outline of his tattoo.

My favorite part of his body; it used to be his tattoo, I think to myself, as he shifts in the heavy darkness, hiding the slight hitch in his breathing by burying his face against my shoulder, so that he can press himself more firmly against me.

It used to be his tattoo, but my fingers play forward across him, moving from back to chest, tracing the puckered scar of the gunshot wound. His hand covers mine and we lie like that for a moment, completely still, both our hands covering the memory of me saving his life as his heart pulses underneath mine. I remember the blood, the bright, bright blood in the cold air, but I push it away for now. Now is not the time for bloody memories.

It used to be his tattoo, I think, but then there is the gunshot wound, and then—I smile, as my fingers continue their trickling trail, and Tobias stiffens against me, every muscle locking rigidly—I trace down his legs, over the back, to the slight change in his skin where I know the silvery scar from Eric remains, cutting across his hamstring.

He is only wearing his boxers, but somehow, as we remain close together, I am no longer scared of his warm skin against my own. It's the closest I've ever been to him, in _this _sort of light, and he does know this, if nothing else. I feel him slowly relax, but his breathing remains quick, his pulse thudding in both our ears. Or maybe, I wonder, it is my own pulse, but we are so close that I cannot differentiate between the two.

"I know all your scars," I whisper, and I mean so much more than the physical ones. I know his mental scars too; I know Tobias, inside and out.

He shifts again, rolling so that I am underneath him, and if my pulse wasn't racing before, it is now. I will never be used to this, how his proximity affects me.

"I know yours," he says, his deeper voice rolling across me.

"Do you?"

His hand slides, around from my back, coming to rest on my hip, at the junction of shirt and pants. I am wearing a soft shirt, and grey pants that may once have belonged to someone in Abnegation. They are the most comfortable things I own, and I use them for sleeping. If their comfort has partially to do with memories of my old life, then so be it. But instead of going rigid, pushing his hand away, tensing, I remain easy underneath is touch, my breathing hitching, but in a new way, a languid, leisurely way.

"Tris?" His tone is careful, carefully even, and his hand is dutifully motionless.

I take a breath. Even Dauntless, even now, it is always hard to be brave. "I _said_," I breathe, and the next words come more easily. "Do you?"

I feel him huff a laugh against me, and then his fingers edge between shirt and skin, pushing the material up slightly and I gasp, a new feeling, this tingly, heart-racing, pulse-pounding sensation, and my throat burns for air like it does in combat, only this is now, this is Tobias, and combat is the furthest thing from my mind.

"I do," he tells me. His fingers play up my stomach and the shirt travels with it. "I do," Tobias says again, and I realize that he does, somehow, he knows where I am ticklish and where I am not, knows who I am, even without ever having been allowed to truly learn me, as I have him. His hands move around to my back, and he draws them forward again, caressing, appreciating, and then one accidentally brushes higher and I tremor goes through me with such force that I can't squelch it, not even close.

"Tris?" he says again. But right at this moment, even with Tobias, I have no more words, and so instead I stretch my arms out above my head, in the universal symbol for undressing. He looks at me for a long time in the dark, so open beneath him, and I wonder if he can guess why, why tonight, of all nights, is so different.

"This is different," he says, and I think, perhaps he can. "Usually it's you asking me to undress myself." And then again, I think, perhaps not.

I chuckle, even stretched out beneath him like this, vulnerable and almost-afraid, and he leans down to kiss me, warm and solid above me, his hot lips moving against mine, and if the departure of my shirt hadn't broke the contact of our lips, I would barely have noticed it. Tobias has always had the ability to drive me wild.

He buries his hands in my hair, and I think of the time he threw knives at me, nearly shearing off some of it when he nicked my ear.

His hands sink lower against my body, moving over all of my torso now, and I shiver and shiver and wonder if it is possible to faint, from this new but somehow familiar sensation, and I think of the time that he admired my tattoo, my first one, and his fingers almost-nearly-but-not-quite touched my collarbone, and I sigh into his mouth.

I can feel him changing against me, his muscles hardening and softening, his biceps shaking a little, both from hovering above me and suppressed energy, I imagine, and I wonder how to convey to him that this time will be different, that it will be everything new, everything that we can do to say goodbye, just in case.

"I love you," I tell him, and I slide my hands down his chest, down over the gunshot wound, over the ribbed muscles of his abdominals, down, down to the waistline of his underwear, which I know even in the near pitch of the darkness will be black.

"Tris," he says again, bewildered, and I wonder to myself if he knows no other words.

"I love you," I say, because two can play that game, and then his own hands shift, shift from my breasts to the waistline of my Abnegation pants, and I realize how it is possible to forget all other words but his name. "Tobias," I gasp, overcome, and we pause, for a moment, still hovering on the verge of innocence.

My courage has run out. I am finally paralyzed; not with fear exactly, perhaps—maybe awkwardness would be the more apt term, for what holds me motionless, but I stop, and Tobias stops with me.

And then Tobias, Tobias who has inhuman self control, Tobias who always stops, who is too aware, perhaps hyperaware, of my emotions, Tobias leans forward to murmur in my ear.

"Show me," his hot breath brushes against my cheek, in a parody of how I once demanded he take off his pants. "Show me," he whispers again, and I realize that he, too, is perhaps overcome, and how we are both too caught up and unwilling to back down, but somehow too shy to proceed.

"Are you asking me to undress?" I say, and manage to inject playfulness into my tone, lightening the mood just enough to make the removal of my pants a feat dauntless enough for a Dauntless.

"Yes," he says, and together we help me slip out of them, and I lie there beneath him in my underwear, and he settles his body over mine, covering me completely with his warmth. "I could fall asleep like this," he teases, relaxing so that the majority of his weight is on me, but not completely relaxed, I know, because Tobias would worry about crushing me.

I giggle helplessly, pushing at his shoulders as he pretends to snore, and wriggle underneath him, and then he suddenly jumps off me with catlike speed, retracting so that no parts of our bodies are touching and he is above me once more as if about to do a pushup, and I look at his eyes in the darkness, two twin pools of blackness against white.

"What is it?" I ask.

"I—" his eyes flicker and he looks down at me, then himself, then at me again. "I—what do you want, Tris? I can't, I'm not…"

"Not what?"

"I'm worried I won't, or that I will, you know."

"_What_?" I ask again, insistent. "You're worried what?"

"I'm worried I'll push you too far," he finally snaps out. "That I won't know when you want me to stop." He gestures vaguely around himself. "I'm, you know, I'm a very physical person. I'm very physically, ah, invested in this. And I don't want that to, well, to cloud my judgment."

I wonder what he means, think I know, decide not to ask further clarification. I try to make out his outline in the dark, and wonder if his wild gesticulations were an attempt to refer to his underwear. Christina and I whispered about sex, once or twice, and I read an Erudite anatomy textbook that I found among Caleb's belongings. I know how it is supposed to work, and the man's physiological response is certainly an important component. Tobias's words seem to indicate that it is not a lack of response he is suffering from, so I don't understand the problem.

I pull on his shoulders, drawing him down to me once more, and hold him firmly in place as I wriggle against him, just as I had when he dropped me like a hot plate. I feel his muscles contract frantically and see a vein in his face pulse and then—yes, I'm pretty sure I know what that is, pressing against my legs, and I repress a smile along with a surge of adrenaline. Somehow, I doubt Tobias thinks this is a laughing matter.

"I don't want you to stop," I finally say, and it is one of the hardest things I've ever said, but Tobias has helped me enough, has asked me to undress and broached the barrier that was before unbreachable, and so I can summon the last reserves of my courage to ask this of him.

"Not, not at all?"

"Not at all," I confirm, pressing my lips against his, and I close my eyes, feeling them roll up into my head as one of his hands strokes down my stomach, coming to rest on the sharp bone of my pelvis.

"Tris," he whispers, and then his hand sinks lower, over and beneath my thin underwear, and I am gone. My hands move of their own accord, exploring parts of Tobias that I've never seen before, never even imagined, really, and my nervousness compounds with the liquid adrenaline and pleasure of my brain to a sensation I've never felt before, not even during our deepest kiss, our longest embrace, and my breathing and pulse is a dull roar in my ears, his hot breath harsh against my face and neck, and I want to be closer to him, I want this more than I've ever wanted anything, maybe, with a burning ache that I could never describe.

"Tobias," I say, pressing up, unsure but so sure, somehow, "Tobias."

When we come together it is nothing like the textbooks, nothing like Christina described, it is unique to us, to Four and Six, Tobias and Tris, and the roaring in my brain becomes a surging waterfall, full of tiny stars and Tobias, and we crash over the edge together. He twines his hands in mine, his lips capturing my ragged breathing, and this night we have for ourselves, we will always have for ourselves, it will always be us. And then he moves against me again, and miraculously, sensation builds once more in the muscles I have never used before, despite all the Dauntless training in the world, and I am less afraid now, as I sigh underneath him, and we go once more over the edge—together.

000

**review?**


End file.
